Blogiversary

Four years ago, I started Standing By. It was just before the Presidential elections, and I could see it coming. Obama would be elected, and impose a Marxist governing system on this nation as fast as he could do so. Some may be curious about the title of the blog. Here is what I wrote on 23 October 2008:

The title of this weblog is a reference to the last line of the poem "On His Blindness" by John Milton. Milton's exact quote is "They also server who only stand and wait." I too often feel blind to the full extent of why this or that is happening. I can't help but believe that much goes by for which I am simply not educated enough to understand. Never the less, I will try to pass on to the reader the best I can find on topics of daily interest from those more educated in these matters than I am, and together we will try to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Of course, I also hope to acquire some knowledge of this "blogger stuff" and to finally find out what the heck an RSS feed is.

I hope in the years since, as I have brought to your attention the thoughts of great thinkers and writers such as Thomas Sowell, Jonah Goldberg, David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh, and newer (to me) authors such as Daren Jonescu, that you and I have learned more about why things are happening, and what we can do about it. I have published 852 posts so far, and written a total of 932. The difference represents ideas either not fully formed, or which on reflection seemed not important enough to bring to a wider audience. I don't have the exact statistics in front of me, but of the posts, probably 40% have dealt in one way or another with guns, or self defense. Another 30% have dealt in some way or another with the Constitution.  I wanted to leave for my grand daughter, and now for my grand son, a record of why I did what I did, thought what I thought, and hopefully leave them with the tools to work their way back.

The United States is, or was, truly exceptional.  No other nation on earth had a Constitution like ours.  I can't help but feel that Constitution was the result of Divine Providence.  The United States was truly the place to which everybody wanted to come.  Unlike Europe, a person could come here and make something of himself, provide for his family, and enjoy freedom and prosperity.  The Constitution set limits on what the Federal government could do.  Because it took a small role in peoples lives, it left a greater scope for them to pursue their dreams.  Because property was respected, people were encouraged to satisfy customers desires by innovation and invention, secure in the knowledge that they would reap the benefits.  The candle thus was replaced by oil lamps, to be in turn replaced by electric incandescent lights, which are now giving way to light emitting diodes.  Despite the population growth, Malthus's predictions have not come true.  We have innovated at each stage to produce more food for more people on less land with fewer hands.  It is said that there is no shortage of actual food.  Instead, there is a shortage of goodwill in some nations, where those in power would rather starve their people than make food aide available to starving minorities.  But the evil is in those people who would deny food and medicine, not in the those who would provide the food and medical aide

Starting around the turn of the last century, with the election of the first "Progressives" to government, the government has grown, and the plain meaning of the Constitution has been subverted and in some cases turned on its head.  Property is no longer respected in America, which in turn has made innovation and invention a riskier prospect.  Hard work and inspiration no longer bring prosperity. Indeed, now children aspire to be rock and roll stars, or Wall Street moguls rather than becoming great scientists or engineers.  Rather than make more pie, people more and more see taking others' pie to be the road to riches.

The GAO  estimated there were approximately 8 million active concealed carry permit holders in the United States as of 31 December 2011, out of approximately 300 million population.  If we also add Constitutional carriers, and those that carry without a permit but are otherwise peaceable people, there may be 8.5 million carrying guns in public, or about 3%.  That is a small number, and yet it is small enough to have brought crime down in every state where "shall issue" concealed carry has been implemented.  Thus, I consider carrying a gun, and being proficient in its use to be a civic duty, on a par with voting.  Now, crime in this country, contrary to what you may hear overseas is not rampant.  I can go most places without being threatened.  But I have found that the responsibilities of carrying a gun daily have made me see the world as it is, not as I want it to be.  I can't help but believe that if more people carried a gun, and felt those responsibilities, the infantilization that I see every day around me would slowly disappear.

That is my great hope.